Obama’s ‘Strategic Guidance’ Calls for More Defense Gutting

The PJ Media ^ | 4/10/13 | Bridget Johnson

[Nachum]

The weakening of the Defense Department’s readiness continued today as President Obama’s FY 2014 budget proposed whacking billions more from a military force already reeling from $500 billion in sequestration cuts.

Undersecretary of Defense Bob Hale, comptroller, told reporters at the Pentagon today that the changes already in effect for this year since mandatory cuts went into effect “are going to have significant and adverse effects, particularly on military readiness.”

“Some programs are exempt or protected. The military personnel funding exempt by law, embarrassingly so, are Senate-confirmed political appointees,” Hale said. “By policy, we’ll exempt Afghan wartime operations, our wounded warrior programs, and some others. And we will protect — that is, to the extent we can — we’ll avoid cuts in some of our deployed forces, especially first-to-fight forces in Korea and other deployed forces, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets in critical theaters — we don’t want to blind ourselves — and in general we want to make clear to our potential adversaries that even though we’re having some budgetary problems, we are still there, and we will protect the United States and its allies.”